15 Facts About Oded Goldreich

Oded Goldreich is a professor of computer science at the faculty of mathematics and computer science of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

Oded Goldreich won the Knuth Prize in 2017 and was selected in 2021 to receive the Israel Prize in mathematics.

Oded Goldreich is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Oded Goldreich has contributed to the development of pseudorandomness, zero knowledge proofs, secure function evaluation, property testing, and other areas in cryptography and computational complexity.

Oded Goldreich has authored several books including: Foundations of Cryptography which comes in two volumes, Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective, and Modern Cryptography, Probabilistic Proofs and Pseudorandomness.

Oded Goldreich has, in addition to his outstanding research contributions, advanced these fields through many survey articles and several first class textbooks.

Oded Goldreich has contributed eminent results, new basic definitions and pointed to new directions of research.

Oded Goldreich has been one of the driving forces for the theoretical computer science community for three decades.

Education Minister Yoav Gallant vetoed his selection over Oded Goldreich's alleged support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

One of the reasons for the decision was a letter signed by Oded Goldreich calling German parliament not to equate BDS with anti-semitism.

However, according to Oded Goldreich, he did not support BDS but instead signed a petition calling for the halt of EU funding for the Israeli Ariel University on the occupied West Bank.

On 8 April 2021 Israel's Supreme Court of Justice ruled in favor of Gallant's petition so that Oded Goldreich could receive the prize that year, giving Gallant a month to further examine the issue.

In November 2021, Shasha-Biton announced that she would block Oded Goldreich from receiving the prize.

Oded Goldreich should be given the Israel Prize in Mathematics, despite Education Minister Shasha-Biton's decision.

Oded Goldreich is married to Dana Ron, who is a computer scientist at Tel Aviv University, and has collaborated with Ron on approximation algorithms.